PACIFIC ISLANDS REPORT

Pacific Islands Development Program/East-West Center
With Support From Center for Pacific Islands Studies/University of Hawai‘i

By Robert Keith-Reid and Samisoni Pareti

SUVA, Fiji (Islands Business, March 2006) – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabou plans to appear in Fiji next month to meet delegates from Pacific Islands countries that recognise China but not Taiwan.

Pacific countries that prefer to deal with Taiwan rather than China either hadn't been invited to the meeting by the time Islands Business went to print or had decided to boycott it.

On April 5, the Chinese leader, as premier number two in the Chinese dictatorship lineup, will attend what a Fiji Government announcement described as an "economic development and cooperation forum ministerial conference."

Next day, April 6, he'll have talks with the prime ministers of Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu and president of the Federated States of Micronesia. All these countries prefer to [recognize] China in return for economic aid.

They are all members of the region's political club, the Pacific Islands Forum. The countries that prefer to [give] their loyalty to Taiwan-Tuvalu, Kiribati, Palau, the Solomon Islands, Nauru, Palau and the Marshall Islands are also Forum members.

This split in Forum country ranks is not the first one achieved by China as it wages its anti-Taiwan [campaign] in the Pacific Islands.

The Suva meeting will be somewhat of an embarrassment for the Suva-headquartered Forum Secretariat.

This is having to tread a delicate line between helping pro-Chinese members prepare for the meeting and avoiding annoying pro-Taiwan countries.

"We're involved to the extent that we are supporting and helping members to take part," the Forum's secretary-general, Greg Urwin, told Islands Business.

The secretariat is playing a profile as low as it can go in handling the matter.

For its part, Fiji's Foreign Affairs Ministry said invitations had been issued to all 16 Forum member countries. It would be up to each country to decide whether to attend or not, said Isikeli Mataitoga, chief executive of the ministry.

Mataitoga declined to comment on the China-Taiwan sensitivity, only confirming that the summit is funded by Beijing and co-hosted by the Forum Secretariat and the Fiji Government.

"We are co-hosting because it is the country in which the Forum will be held and secondly, because we support the initiatives and trade and investment promotion proposals that will be discussed by the leaders attending the forum."

Initially, the China summit in the Pacific was heralded as the summit of Pacific leaders in the hope that heads of Forum-member governments would attend.

After hearing of Beijing's latest ploy for influence in the islands, the Taiwan Trade Mission representative in Suva, Sherman Shi-Nan Kuo objected to the involvement of the Forum Secretariat .

"Yes, we have informed the Forum that Taiwan opposes its involvement in the summit," he said. "We are a donor to the Forum and we told them that if they are organising a summit for China, then we can also ask for the same favour."

Taiwan Trade Mission's Kuo said that for 2006, Taiwan has [given] US$700,000 for the Forum Secretariat. It is also continuing with a US$500,000 scholarship scheme for island university students.

A Fiji government announcement said Jiabou's call would be a "historic" event since it would be the first meeting between China and the Pacific's islands nations.

Such Pacific Islands academics as Professor Ron Crocombe suggested that the Chinese are playing a long-term game for access to Pacific fish stocks which they already have and possible seabed mining opportunities.

In Papua New Guinea, the Chinese are moving into investment in mining and gas extraction.

They are also thought to have ambitions for a strategic position in the Pacific Islands, a region that in particular the Australians and Americans regard as their "patch" as the Australian Prime Minister John Howard puts it.

The Australians have visions of the islands being taken over by Chinese organised crime and claim that drug busts, passport rackets and other criminal activities demonstrate that they're already happening.

Bertil Lintner, a journalist and an expert on organised crime, in a new book about Chinese organised crime, Blood Brothers, says China's diplomats cultivate gangs, routinely using them to spy on countries and to corrupt government politicians and bureaucrats.

China claims that the democratically governed Republic of Taiwan is part of China and as such it is a renegade breakaway island colony. It keeps threatening to attack [its offshore neighbor] in between threatening countries that refuse to accept what it calls its "One China" policy by establishing diplomatic relations with China.

President Chen Shiu Bian of Taiwan made a goodwill tour of some of Taiwan Pacific Islands friends in 2005.

The Chinese ambassador to Fiji, Cai Jinbiao, reacted with [apparent] anger in 2005 when he heard that the Taiwanese leader would overnight at Nadi and be welcomed with a Fijian welcoming ceremony by chiefs of the district.

By fronting up in Fiji, Jiabou will put it one over other major powers who for one reason or another has motives for cultivating Pacific Islanders for the few assets they have.

On May 26-27, Japan's prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, will host the fourth Japan-Pacific Islands meeting at Okinawa. Known as the PALM meeting, held every three years, it is Japan's big pitch for having good relations with the Pacific Islands.

On June 27, island leaders have been invited to be in Paris for a meeting with President Jacques Chirac, who first met them in French Polynesia two years ago.

The point of the meetings for the French is to keep Pacific leaders sweet about France's presence in the Pacific and improve relations between them and France's three Pacific territories.

In 1990, during an election trip to Hawaii, then President George Bush dropped in on a meeting of islands leaders there. His son dropped in briefly on a similar meeting in October 2003. Neither event brought anything much to the Pacific.

China has actively been cultivating relations with the Pacific Islands for more than two decades. In doing so, it has clashed often with Taiwan as the two have clawed each other for island government loyalties.

Both countries have [won] friendships with aid now totalling tens of millions of dollars.

There's hardly a Pacific Islands leader who hasn't been invited on one or more junket trips to China or Taiwan, depending on whom they back. Groups of Pacific Islands journalists are also led around in Beijing by the nose, blocked from seeing the sinister side of life in China.

The benefits gained by Taiwan from its Pacific games are the pleasure of annoying the Chinese, who are apt to turn ugly in their attempts to block switches of loyalty to Taiwan and having a voice at the United Nations.

China has blocked UN membership for Taiwan, but its case for membership has been put there, as was the case in 2005, by its Pacific Islands friends there.

China has cultivated Pacific Islands governments for more than 20 years. It has embassies in Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia and is planning to open a consulate in French Polynesia.

It's a tussle with Taiwan over Kiribati's loyalty it lost badly two years ago when a new Kiribati government elected for a lucrative deal with Taiwan. This led to the closure of the Chinese embassy at Tarawa-although four Chinese officials continue to lurk there-and the closure of a satellite and missile tracking station it operated there.

Former Vanuatu prime minister, Serge Vohor, made a bad mistake in 2004 when after junkets to Taiwan and China he switched Vanuatu's loyalties to Taiwan without consulting his cabinet ministers. Apparently got at by Chinese diplomats, the ministers rebelled and Vohor lost office.

Nauru had fun and games with China in 2005. It used to be pro-Taiwan, which thus helped with the cost of running Air Nauru.

In July 2002, the then Nauru government decided it could get a better deal even at the cost of money for Air Nauru and switched recognition to China. Last year, the present Nauru government, deciding that Taiwan was a better deal after all, restored its recognition of Taiwan to Beijing's mortification.

Islands Business was told of an extraordinary scene at Seoul airport last year when, enroute to Taiwan, President Ludwig Scotty after leaving an aircraft, was surrounded and practically dragged off by a horde of screaming Chinese officials intent on diverting him to Beijing.

He was presented with a ticket to Beijing and offered red carpet treatment. But President Scotty headed for Taiwan instead where the carpet he trod was a deeper red.

Last month, Air Nauru announced that with Taiwan's support it soon expected to replace its sole jet aircraft seized by the United States last year for debt.

Other Chinese/Taiwan conflict was over membership of the South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO), a regional agency backed by most of the Pacific's national tourism promotion offices.

Taiwan became one of SPTO's few sources of cash. Then China moved in by joining SPTO at ministerial level-the first non-Pacific government to do so.

It blocked Taiwan's application for membership with threats, although the application was supported by pro-Taiwan members.

The Chinese made it plain that if Taiwan was admitted, then countries that hope to be put on the list of tourist destinations that Chinese tourists were allowed to visit-chiefly Fiji, Vanuatu,

Tonga, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia-would be greatly disappointed.

"The scheme of the Taiwan authorities to join SPTO is only to create 'One China', 'One Taiwan' or 'Two Chinas' in the world and to sabotage the good relations between China and its friendly countries," China's ambassador to Papua New Guinea, Li Zhengju, told the 2005 South Pacific Tourism Conference.

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